This invention relates to an ink jet printing method using an ink jet recording element containing a polymeric network.
In a typical ink jet recording or printing system, ink droplets are ejected from a nozzle at high speed towards a recording element or medium to produce an image on the medium. The ink droplets, or recording liquid, generally comprise a recording agent, such as a dye or pigment, and a large amount of solvent. The solvent, or carrier liquid, typically is made up of water and an organic material such as a monohydric alcohol, a polyhydric alcohol or mixtures thereof.
An ink jet recording element typically comprises a support having on at least one surface thereof an ink-receiving or image-receiving layer, and includes those intended for reflection viewing, which have an opaque support, and those intended for viewing by transmitted light, which have a transparent support.
An important characteristic of ink jet recording elements is their need to dry quickly after printing. To this end, porous recording elements have been developed which provide nearly instantaneous drying as long as they have sufficient thickness and pore volume to effectively contain the liquid ink.
Porous inorganic particles, such as silica gel, precipitated silica and clays are widely used in ink jet recording elements because of their highly absorptive properties. For example, EP 0 739 747 A2 and U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,965,244; 6,114,022 and 6,140,406 disclose porous image-receiving layers containing silica gel and/or precipitated silica However, these types of image-receiving layers often have low mechanical strength or coating integrity due to weak interactions between the porous particles and, therefore, the image-receiving layer can be easily removed from the support upon which it was coated.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,510,004 relates to the use of polymers and copolymers of N,N-diallyl-3-hydroxyazetidinium salts as agents for improving the wet strength of paper. However, there is no disclosure of using these polymers in an image-receiving layer for an ink jet recording element.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,409,334 discloses the use of an amino-silane compound combined with a wet-strength polymer having a reactive azetidinium group in producing an image-receiving layer for an ink jet recording element However, there is no disclosure of using a non-latex polymeric binder that would react with the azetidinium group such that the integrity of the image-receiving layer would be greatly enhanced.
It is an object of this invention to provide an ink jet printing method using an ink jet recording element that has good image quality with excellent dry time. It is another object of the invention to provide an ink jet printing method using an ink jet recording element having an image-receiving layer of good integrity and sufficient waterfastness.
These and other objects are achieved in accordance with the invention which comprises an ink jet printing method comprising the steps of:
A) providing an ink jet printer that is responsive to digital data signals;
B) loading the printer with an ink jet recording element comprising a support having thereon an image-receiving layer comprising a polymeric network formed by a chemical reaction between a wet strength polymer, amino-functionalized inorganic particles and a hydrophilic polymer other than a wet-strength polymer;
C) loading the printer with an ink jet ink composition; and
D) printing on the ink jet recording element using the ink jet ink in response to the digital data signals.
By use of the printing method of the invention, an ink jet recording element is obtained that has a good image quality with an excellent dry time. In addition, the ink jet recording element can be made with a desired coating integrity and waterfastness.